Artists and Their Repertoire of Responses

Abstract

Chapter 7 turns to India’s increasingly angry and insecure but resilient art world, which suggests a range and variety of responses to such an orchestration of violence, contradicting the view of ‘artists as only victims’, as much as it is a reminder of the resilience of democracy in India. Addressing four dominant themes—artists as attackers, unity and collective action, exile and resistance, and fear and self-censorship—it is an exploration of these diverse manifestations. These categories are, of course, only illustrative and not an exhaustive commentary on the assorted ways in which free speech is both understood and modified, when it is increasingly confronted with threatening, violent behaviour.